HE CARRIED a little leather-bound book of Burns with him in the courtroom and could recite many of his works by heart. But when Abraham Lincoln was asked to encapsulate what Scotland's national poet meant to him, he was almost lost for words.
The American president, and author of the Gettysburg Address, confessed: "Thinking of what he has said, I can not say anything which seems worth saying."
The note, written by Lincoln to the Burns Club in Washington in 1865, was penned in response
to a request from the White House tutor Alexander Williamson, a Scot, who asked the president for "the honour of your recognition of the genius of Scotland's bard, by either a toast, a sentiment, or in any other way you may deem proper".
Lincoln's first version reads: "I can not frame a toast to Burns. I can say nothing worthy of his generous heart, and transcendent genius. A. Lincoln."
The second, expanded version, penned beneath, reads: "I can not frame a toast to Burns. I can say nothing worthy of his generous heart and transcending genius. Thinking of what he has said, I can not say anything which seems worth saying. A. Lincoln."
According to an explanatory note, the "grievous cares" of his office prevented Lincoln from attending the Burns night but, on an earlier occasion, the centenary of the poet's birth in 1859, he was said to have attended a celebration when revellers drank "mountain dew" and "a large number of mysterious bottles circulated freely".
Lincoln was introduced to the poetry of Burns as a child by the Scottish-American Jack Kelso and could recite works, including Tam O' Shanter, by heart. Milton Hay, who was a clerk in his Springfield law office, once told a reporter that Lincoln "could quote Burns by the hour. I have been with him in that little office and heard him recite with the greatest admiration and zest Burns' ballads and quaint things".
The official biography of the president, which gave an approved account of his life, said: "When practising law before his election to Congress, a copy of Burns was his inseparable companion on the circuit; and this he pursued so constantly, that it is said he now has by heart every line of his favourite poet."
Such was the president's enthusiasm, he dreamed of visiting Ayr to see the poet's birthplace.
Remarking on the busts of Shakespeare and Burns in his office, Lincoln told James Grant Wilson, editor of Chicago's first literary magazine: "They are my two favourite authors, and I must manage to see their birthplaces some day if I can contrive to cross the Atlantic."
The note to the Burns Club in Washington goes on sale in New York on 22 May and is expected to raise £6,000.
It is part of the manuscript collection of the late publisher Malcolm Forbes, which is being sold in six separate sales at Christie's.
Reflecting the millionaire publisher's lifelong fascination for the handwritten works of United States presidents, the collection includes a draft of John F Kennedy's inaugural address, Lincoln's last presidential address and the opera glasses he was clutching the night he died.
Albert Einstein's letter to Franklin D Roosevelt urging the US to begin research on nuclear weapons and Lincoln's call for former slaves to be allowed to vote were also acquired by the publisher, who was said to have bid at every important auction of historic documents from the 1960s until his death in 1990.
Forbes, whose collection of nine Faberge eggs was sold for £100 million in 2004, said: "A letter penned in the hand of a president is a far better portrait of the man than a photograph or a painting."
The publisher said of his collection: "Documents remind us that these are more than historical figures - they were people pouring out their hopes, sadnesses, reactions and directions on to paper.
"Their letters and documents are what make flesh and blood of key figures in our country's history."
POVERTY TO POWER
ABRAHAM Lincoln was born in 1809 and grew up in poverty in a one-room shack in Kentucky - but became one of America's greatest presidents.
The Republican leader took the United States to victory in the Civil War and helped unite the country at Gettysburg with his call for: "Government of the people, by the people, for the people."
Believing that "all men are created equal", Lincoln was a lifelong opponent of slavery, which was abolished under his leadership. He was assassinated in 1865.
POET OF THE PEOPLE
ROBERT Burns' birth in Alloway, Ayrshire, in 1759, came half a century before that of Abraham Lincoln. And the author of A Man's A Man For A' That died in 1796, aged 37, so the pair's lifespans did not overlap - yet their attitudes had much in common.
Credited as an influence on the Romantic movement and in the birth of socialism, Burns fell out of favour after becoming too vocal in his support for the French Revolution.
His final years were marked by ill-health and financial difficulties.
The full article contains 859 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
